On Thursday 17 May (case C-147/16), the Court of Justice of the EU ruled that the directive on unfair terms in consumer contracts may apply to an educational establishment.
The national court is required to assess of its own motion whether the terms in a contract concluded between an educational establishment and a student are unfair, the European Court ruled.
In the principal case, a higher education establishment went to the Magistrates’ Court of Antwerp (Belgium) to recover from a student the balance of a loan that the establishment had awarded for the reimbursement of a debt taken out with the same establishment (registration fees and a study trip). The contract signed on the basis of a repayment plan provided for interest to be paid in the event of payment default concerning the amount in monthly instalments.
Under these circumstances, the Belgian court asked the Court of Justice whether: - in the framework of a default procedure (the student did not attend the hearing), the court may examine the question of whether the contract falls within the scope of the EU directive on unfair terms in consumer contracts (93/13/EEC); - an educational establishment financed mainly by state funds should be regarded as a “professional” within the meaning of the directive, when it grants a repayment plan to a student.
In its judgment, the Court first of all recalls that a national court is obliged to assess ex officio whether a contractual term is unfair and, in this context, whether the directive applies to the contract containing this clause. As regards the notion of “professional”, the court stresses that it must be understood in the broadest sense, as it makes it possible to assess whether or not the contractual relationship is among the activities that a person provides professionally.
In this case, it is not about the establishment’s principal mission, that of education, but about a complementary and ancillary service provided by it, which consists of granting students' facilities to repay existing debts and is fundamentally a contract for credit.
Subject to verification of this point by the national court, the Court of Justice considers that by providing this type of service, the establishment is acting as a “professional” within the meaning of the directive, stressing that the purpose of this directive is above all to protect consumers (the student who took out the loan) from professionals (the educational establishment), which is likely to have better information and greater technical skills in drawing up a credit contract. (Original version in French by Francesco Gariazzo)